Our Sea Foam Child
by my paper teeth
Summary: She is dead. He holds her child in the crook of his arm, and weeps. Weeps for the woman he loved, and the child that is not his.


The thought blossomed in my brain after rereading 'Ghost Hunter', and so I followed it through.

Reviews, comments and critiques are greatly appreicated.

_Though__ the content is mine, the characters, apart from an obvious few, do not belong to me._

.

**Our Sea Foam Child**

.

_She is dead. He holds her child in the crook of his arm, and weeps. Weeps for the woman he loves, and the child that is not his. _

The wood is dark, deep and full of worry.

He sits there, slumped on the soaked soil, feeling it's wet warmth between his bare toes; the hot air is damp between the trees with the breath of summer.

They should not be there, not like this, driven by fear, like some prey taking flight. It should have never been like this. _Her_ propped up by a tree, her legs spread as her cries muffled only slightly by grating teeth, ring out into the unstill night. She screams from the pain, the anguish, the misery; the physical and the emotional sorrow.

But they cannot be heard, they cannot be found; for they will be slaughtered, like her new clan had been some still moments ago. Their survival counts on silence, and so through gritted teeth she pushes, pushes till she thinks she might burst at the seams, pushes until she thinks she can almost taste the platter of her soul.

The child spills out into the world, down into the dusty soil, to be quickly scooped up into his arms and hurriedly wiped of, the visceral pulp of its mother still coating its eyes and nostrils.

They both wait with baited breath for its first cry, the first sound of significance that would relieve both their worries for its mortality. The wail is no more than a whimper, a sound of hurried breath released from the child's already plump mouth, as though it knew it had to keep quiet.

He's lost in that face, crumpled with immaturity, its creased cheeks still smattered with blood, _her blood._

She's still lying there, her knees parted in her final expression of motherhood. The child, still connected to its mother, writhes around; her hilt pierces its navel, with their final physical bond.

He glances back at her, tearing himself from the face, crumpled in new born anguish, glances back at her, to the catch the final ragged rises of her chest.

Like an empty water pouch, her life slowly drains from her, as her chest compresses for the final time, and he thinks that her carriage might still continue to sink into the ground as her souls escape her broken body.

He wishes to reach for her, but the child, so small, still too tiny cannot be put down. He might then loose it forever, just as he has now lost it's mother. He severs the umbilical cord with a single hand, the other still cradling it's neck, the natural point he believes he must protect.

She is dead. He holds her child in the crook of his arm, and weeps. Weeps for the woman he loved, and the child that is not his.

.

.

_He'd watched her blossom into maturity, but never paid it much attention. For him she was still that girl, her eyes bright with indifference, who had accused him a thief, stolen wolf and stuffed him in a bag. That girl, so pale that her clan tattoos looked as though they might be troughs of darkness, small linear caves carved into the hollows of her cheeks. _

_And so now it was a wonder to him, that this woman and that girl were two visions of the same creature. Surely not? The waist length hair and glass cut cheeks bones hadn't been there before. The sweep of her collarbone had never been so pronounced, and the freckles that smattered like constellations across her bare skin were surely new apparitions. _

_She twists in the water when the sound of that feeble twig, snapping beneath his boot, betrays his close proximity. _

_She's bathing, her languid movements sending out small ripples across the algae laden surface of her secluded pond. Her shoulder breach the surface, beneath the water he can see the silently rippling curve of her continuing chest. _

'_You can watch.' She tells him. It's odd that she doesn't chide him for watching._

_He sees a flash of her mother in those bare shoulders; the prickle of goose bumps across her naked skin, her hair slicked back, black with saturation, just like that fallen woman, all those summers ago. _

_They were new, undefined. His feelings for her were tumultuous, and it felt as though he were stealing something precious. _

_He hears the howl of wolf, and takes that at a point to exits, silently turning down her brave offer._

._  
><em>.

He teases his sorrow and pretends the child is his. The hair, black still with birth, now three moons in length, could have been his gift to it. The black eyes are hers, but he cannot deny that the foreign flickers of green and gold, swimming around in those spectral eyes, flecks of forest, are from some other party.

They travel far from the hollow in which it's mother, daubed in death marks now rests. He likes to believe she is slumbering, like a bear; she hibernates in the open air, to awake sometime soon, to rejoin him.

They sleep under the stars, wrapped up together in downy fur, as he strokes her furry cheeks and listens with wrapped attention to her gurgles.

Wolf rejoins them a moon later, to lick at his jaw and howl with him as he wallows in the aftermath. A new litter had been delivered into the world, in the deep husk of the warm summer nights, and they too descend upon Torak's grief. They take to the child with great curiosity, but with a near human-like care, they gently nuzzle its cheeks and lap at its soft heels. Wolf's mate, full with milk suckles the child, feeding its swelling belly, filling its arms with a plump vitality.

He struggles with a name, for he knows that child should have one, but what it's mother's intention had been, he'd never know.

Finally a name blossoms within his mind and it's taste against his tongue feels right and true.

_Olsine. _

Bright, beautiful; born into a lambent glow, Olsine is greeted by the howls of wolves and the singing whistle of the sister trees.

The daughter is finally titled and her presence is cemented within the world.

.

.

_He wishes they had never travelled to the sea. The impossible waves crashed against the shoreline. Then, he had been impatient to explore, to dive into those waters and leave the land. She held back, naturally. Her life had been consorted between the trees and though the sea boasted still both flora and fauna akin to the mainland, she could not overcome her unease. The last time they had visited the sea, left the safety of the shore, it had nearly killed them both. She had been treated a stranger on those small isles. The Seals had held her in disbelief and for some time, so had Torak. It was a foreign plain which she wished never to meet again; so after great persuasion, they had camped near to the shore, but had travelled no further. _

'_But this is our land, our choice. We can travel where we want, north, south, in any which direction.' He had pleaded._

'_Yes and this is my choice now, I do not wish to cross those waves.'_

_Her word is final, and he allows himself to relinquish the need to press any further. _

_They made camp and settled there for a few nights; before between the trees men had found their small offering of shelter. _

_They entitled themselves as the Whale clan. Tall men, their wide chests bronzed by the open waters and their unsheltered life upon the shore. Their camp lay in a secluded cove, sheer cliffs swallowed the shore, and only the open mouth, serrated by cruel stone teeth allowed an entrance to their boats. With the offer of food and company they had followed them to their camp. The sight of a smattering of tents greeted their hungry eyes. The Whales, a clan defined by the loop of green crested waves that travelled across their hairline, were as a calm as the cove they resided in. Like the waves they came and went across the shale, carrying heavy backs laden with the day's catch of cod and roe. _

_The waters are still and as Torak steps off the boat and onto the shore he is caught by the sense of complete order. They move as one; the men, the women, even the children. Like the far-reaching limbs of some united being, they work together, unanimously living in an unspoken harmony. This too is reflected in their shelters, large domes scattered across the beach like pebbles, low tunnels of strung up hide create hollowed out passages that interconnect the hive of tents. Like a weed, Torak thinks, the stalks spread between their countless heads. _

_But Renn likes it here, and he can't think why. This sheltered life is helpless he thinks. Apart from the cove the only escape are the ravines that run through the cliff face towards the back of the beach. Barely the width of a man, they run long and deep, and to Torak's muffled joy on one of his days spent exploring, a recreation fuelled by sheer boredom, he finds that they eventually lead back to the forest's dark floor. _

_As guests they are invited to sleep as one of the clan, together, like the gut of a whale in the deep domed belly of the central tent. He sleeps surprisingly well; the damp warmth that fills the air saturates his lungs with a salty scent, the smell of the morning meal, baked long through the night. He awakes in a hazy inconsistency, several revolutions of the sun into their stay, to find Renn missing from his side. She is soon found on the shore, a young man in her company, helping her with her bow. He is polite and welcoming, introducing himself to Torak with his hand settled above his heart, naming himself as Tawn. He is the leader's son, one of three, each separated in age by five summers. But being the middle child, he is not only separated from his brothers by age, but too by a startling height and the great length of the his hair. Torak's eyes barely meet his chin and his own charcoal locks are no match for Tawn's sand coloured hair, that in some great sweep, reaches the base of his copper coloured back. All his people are of a similar face, a custom soon revealed at their morning ceremony, the clan as a whole greeting the summer sun bathed in the oily blubber of their clan creature. _

_Tawn possesses as similar skill with the bow as Renn, but on overhearing their tittering, Torak finds out with a smirk, that she is far steadier with her aim. Too consumed with thoughts of Wolf and his absence, he misses those crucial moments, that summers later haunt him into the the small hours of the morning. He blames himself, for neglecting her; for all those summers and winters spent together with growing affection; ignoring her and when finally having her to call his own, forgetting her existence and letting her slip away. As though under the waves, his head is dragged down into the foggy depths, the water stinging his eyes and blinding him from what was right in front of him. _

_Renn._

.

.

Her name bites at his heels like a dog, but in steadfast preservation of those age-old laws he refuses to let it pass his lips.

Olsine ages by the day, by the second. Every time he turns to catch her presence, her coppery hair has lengthened, her eyes are brighter and her mouth, plump with intelligence, grows with maturity.

The deep, damp breath of summer marks her increasing age. She walks now with unsteady legs and her mouth lets off bursts of what once was inconsistent babble, but which now has evolved into long strings of sentences, poorly pronounced through heavy lips. She loves the wolves as though they were her brothers. She refuses to be shy with them and is prone to leap and bounce off rocks and trunks onto their furry backs when they least expect it. But there is a gentle reserve to her nature too, how she refuses to hold flowers, rather cradles their heads in her chubby fingers, but will never touch their faces. Torak finds her talking to trees, her face pressed into their bark as she tells them tales of her day and of lives she has never lived.

She is her mother's daughter, but at the same time a stranger to him. It must be her father's blood bleeding out into her, for an inquisitive scowl will flash across her face, and her steadfast stance will leave a smile upon his lips.

She grows and lives and laughs like her mother was never able to. Fear still haunts the forest, but she is blissfully unaware, spending her youth collecting freckles across her cheeks and scars scattered upon her knees. He wishes for her mother's presence every day, but with Olsine, he can still stare at that ghost of a smile and watch the fierce vitality she continues to conduct her life with.

.

.

_The voices plague him deep into the night. The wails of the dead. They burn at his markings and force their way into his dreams. He dares not tell her, not to worry her; by they taunt him like a sickness taunts the weak. These voices are new, he has no idea where they have come from, sprung from the forest perhaps or some souls, leaking from cracks in the earth or perhaps they are merely constructs of his own growing paranoia. _

'_She's her mother's daughter, isn't she?'_

'_The words slip so easily from her mouth. I'm sure she's already formed them between her teeth. Between her legs.' _

_She'd answered with conviction to his questioning; pressing the fact that she had only interest in him, as long as he had interest for her. _

'_Do you not want me anymore? Is that why you won't take me as a mate?' She questions him one dawn, as they emerge from the tents to take a faceful of the sleepy eye of the sun. At this he feels the need to shelter the coming conversation, and so directs her away from the shore, towards the ravines. _

_He falters at her questions. For he does not know the reason either. He views her as something startling precious, too gentle, too fragile around the face to be taken with heat._

'_I won't hold you back,' He mumbles to the dust, the two of them now hidden behind one of the smaller domes. _

'_What are you saying?'_

'_I don't know,'_

'_This isn't about Tawn is it?'_

'_I never said it was,' He feels so stupid, reverting back to this old argument, like a child chided so many times for the same wrong, but never learning his lesson._

_'I would never lie to you Torak, don't you believe me?' Her mouth softens; her eyes, fearfully wet. _

'_There is nothing, no feelings, no intentions, nothing.' She spells out the well worn words with a slow intonation. He feels like she might be mocking him, somehow, in some distant, warped reality. In the heat of his boiling rage his tongue lashes out at her._

'_You have her blood within you don't you?_

_She looks stunned, like a rock, frozen. _

'_I thought you'd never hold that against me. I thought you had forgotten,' She says in a small voice._

'_How can I forget that - that face?'_

'_By replacing the memory with my own!'_

'_I can't,' His voice breaks. He's almost pleading with her, but for what he is not sure. _

'_She is no longer part of this world and that is what you must remember. She is gone. I've forgotten her, and so should you.'_

'_I -'_

_She cuts him off with a steely glare that if it were an arrow would pierce his skull between the furrow of his brows. _

'_Is it that_ y_ou can't? Or you that won't?'_

_She storms off, he would like to think there were tears in her eyes, but he know Renn to well to know that she wouldn't shed tears over such a petty argument. How wrong he'd been. _

_He leaves in the middle of the night, leaves her laden with furs and sealskins, to release her from his failings. Because he is sure he is the one in the wrong, and that is why he must leave. He was wrong to ignore her, wrong to never fight for her, and now he'll be gone, only a tattooed pebble to truly cement his escape. Tracing his hands along the sheer walls of those ravines he follows the sandy path as it slowly evolves into soil. The forest is dark and welcoming, the gleam of the moon does not penetrate here; the ground, the bark, even the leaves are as black as night, their surfaces untouched by the sun's warm kiss. _

_The darkness absorbs him and without the thought of return, he dissolves away._

.

.

It comes the time to mark her skin with the pattern of her ancestors, but he has no idea on how to proceed. In a breach of selfishness he wishes to embellish upon her forehead the segmented circle his own skin bears, but in the end he can't bring himself too.

She is the child of three. Her face is too open, to clean to drag his bone needle across, to ravage with a decision he has yet to make.

He will wait. With time the answer will come, until then she is a child of the ground, of the trees and the sky, she is a child of the sea, the sand and soil. And yet for now, she is the child of nothing.

.

.

_An attack on the Viper clan spreads panic within the forest. Their seclusion is broken when their fallen bodies are found, littered across the ground, snapped and segmented like dead leaves, by a Rowan clan hunting party and at once the alert is risen. Talk of attack rising up the coast is whispered between the clans and Torak, in a heartbeat, leaves his lodge with the Ravens to flee to the place where his heart is finally felt. The Whales, their camp being the next north of the shoreline play host to a cauldron of different men flocking in from various camps to protect their salty waters. _

_It is then he sees her next, ten full moons since their parting. Her swollen stomach is the only mark of passage, for her still young face reveals nothing. She glows with brilliance, vitality and happiness. She has been marked as a mate and as she loops her arms loosely round his neck in greeting, bringing her blue-black cheeks to his, he catches the site of the red ring of waves that circle her left wrist. When he questions it she holds it up for him to see, and with gentle hand he twists her arm to examine the fine circle of nine red crests and nine red troughs. Beneath this band is another similar one; running this time in blue, parallel to it's completed sister. This one is unfinished; eight waves to be counted this time._

'_For every moon I am with child. Another ten nights I think, and the last will be filled in.'_

_He wants to apologize, to grab the hilt of his knife and drag it through the skin of his stomach, to gut himself like a fish and let the wash of worries spill out from the wound. But he can't; all he can do is embrace her with familiarity, breath in her scent, soiled with the smell of the sea and fill his eyes with her face._

'_I'm happy for you.'_

_She catches his gaze._

'_You are?'_

'_Truly.'_

_She kisses his cheek and searches his eyes for falter. He is true to his heart and betrays nothings, and so they turn to the sea and she releases her worries. _

'_They speak of stones that rise from the sea. Stones that breach the waters to hunt the men, the women and children; for their heart and hands, slaughtering all irrespective of age or sex. They hunt without remorse or compassion the tales say. Men, women -' she pauses ' children even.'_

_She gazes out to sea, a hand upon her round width, as though that might soothe the child inside her, or even prevent the forthcoming attack. He wants to press her to leave, but he knows she will not go without her mate. He wishes that he could leave and that she would follow. _

_The waters are calm, but the living are not._

_They are coming for them._

_They all know that that is the waiting reality._

_It's all just a matter of time._

.

.

'I'm not her father.' He remarks uncomfortably.

'Of body no, but in your mind and soul,' Fin-Kedinn counters, his once red hair consumed by grey age. His appearance has changed; but his words, his wisdom and his role as Torak's father has not. Torak is grateful for his presence at the clan meet, knowing his staff aided descent into the valley was one of discomfort. But he treats Olsine as though she were a granddaughter, filling her with wild stories and tiny carved animals. And she loves him so, looking up at his snow flecked face with eyes swimming with wonder, her heart full of compassion for all. At this, a strange sadness consumes Torak. She is at least related to his elder by strength of blood; to Torak she has no bond but the faint fading ghost of past affections.

'Her markings. The time has come, has it not?' The Raven leader remarks, his gaze averted to the fern-fueled fire.

'I know.'

'But do you? I think Torak, that you don't have the faintest clue.'

The two mean share a smattering of laughter, but like their faces, it becomes strained. Torak's head finds its self in his hands, as though rubbing his forehead raw might reveal the answer.

'I don't know what to do.' He admits and turning to the older man, reforms his statement as a question; 'Do you?'

'The answer will come. And who's to say there is one true answer. The girl's blood swims with that of so many. Who's to say, like yourself, she is bound to any single clan?'

'Brand her as an outcast?'

'Never,' He crosses.

After a pregnant pause he twists to Torak.

'She is something new, is she not? A new beginning, born from such despair, such destruction. She is a gift. Remember that and her markings will tell the truth.'

.

.

_The air is filled with acrid smoke and despair. Children, abandoned in the haze, scream and cry as the specters rain down upon them with shafts of arrows and the blunt force of their blades. _

_They were wrong, wrong about those creatures being made from stone, brought to life by twisted craft. They are men, as tall as the night is long. The stones they spoke about were sheets of slate, looped with hide to create pelts of armour. But the bloodlust the rumours spoke of were painfully true. _

_Their faces were free of markings, and that should have told them all. They were not men of this land, a southern scent hung about in the smell of sweat and of slaughtered meat. These men stain the sea a deep red. They drench the sands with dilute blood, the life of the lost, splattered out. Lifeless limbs, hacked from the innocent, the vulnerable; reach out to the sea, the solace that they missed by mere strides. _

_The air is heavy with screams that spiral out, unheard into the night. The sheer walls of the cove are ablaze with the hot flicker of flame, let loose to ravage all who stand in its way. Like shadow puppets, the torments of the trapped plays out across the white cliffs like hellish projections._

_ He needs to find her. __The tent, might she still be there?_

_He runs, without care for his own life; only hers, both of hers. She slumbers in one of the furthest tents, he recalls, where to his relief, the fire has not yet reached. The flames might not have spun their smouldering smiles, but death has made its entrance._

_He finds Tawn's body crumpled by the tent's mouth, his hands in death still grasp tightly to the handle of his axe. Torak had never paid enough time to the man, something he now regrets deeply, a true sorrow that settles in his lurching gut. He was a man, who in both life and death fought with blind conviction for the woman he loved._ The two of them together fought for her safety, but this man, now nameless, had lost where Torak must succeed. __

_The tent is empty and this haunts him. He can feel the despair, saturated in the walls, leaking out. Blood, as though its quantity was as free as water is smattered about the tent, dark patches soiling the sand and walls. A hole is crudely cut in the skin of the tent, bloody handprints tearing at its seems; desperation is the blade that sliced it open. It leads out into the forest, a path to the ravines that Torak knows far to well. There is a hope in that and so with his head down, he runs, following the path of raw red footsteps. _

_His heart threatens to rip its self from his chest as he finally reaches the darkness of the forest floor. The smell of burning is gone, blown away by the perversely sweet scent of summer. He runs blindly, forgetting all skill for tracking, he runs with his heart in his throat and his brain crippled in despair. _

_And there she lies._

_Renn. _

_The subtle flutter of her chest and the low moan that slips from between her teeth is a precious call to his ears. She is still alive, though by the sight of the spreading stain across her shoulder, only just. _

'_Is he gone?' She whispers when he reaches her, his hands enveloping her face, cradling it in his palms._

_He refuses to answer; he lets her ashen face go, to instead grasp at her outstretched hand._

_He looks up into her hollow eyes and nods, for that is all he can do. To admit verbally to his demise would be to cement it. And he refused to acknowledge that. _

_She wails out, her pain breaching out into the night. Torak thinks he might double over at the anguish in her voice, the pure unrivalled loss that rings out in his ears as she calls out for her mate; the man who will never come. _

_Her scream quietens to a gurgle, but transforms into the low animalistic groan of physical pain. Of birth. _

_A new stain, flows from between her legs, heralding the coming of her child. _

_He knows not want to do, but follows her motions, as she settles her self by the tree, another wave of pain rippling across her back, to spread her knees and assure him; assure him that the child is coming, and that there is very little time. _

_She screams and bucks with the ebb and flow of her contractions, but with unvoiced direction she pushes, pushes without encouragement, with a desperate need to birth this child before the men might find them again. _

_It feels like an age, a new world viewed through his wide eyes, as she slowly pushes the life from her body with a harrowing force. _

_And then it is over. The child at last opens it's mouth and calls to the open night. He turns to find her, but she is already lost._

_She is dead. He holds her child in the crook of his arm, and weeps. Weeps for the woman he loved, and the child that is not his._

.

.

Olsine sits before his, giddy with anticipation. Her eyes are bright with rapt attention as he prepares the needle over the open fire.

The pastes are set before her, but only one will be used.

Finally the needle is ready, the bone hardened by the fire to make a finer job. He positions himself before her and instructs her to lay her head by the flat of his palm. Sure she will not squirm, he raises a steady hand and begins to prick the skin.

She takes the pain with a strange resilience, and holds his face in her coal black gaze, a rapt attention; no truer trust.

It is over quickly, the paste rubbed into the redden groves of the needles path, the excess is wiped off with water from the pond and once its surface settles she takes her first look at her newly marked face.

She turns to him and greets him with a wide smile.

The small white circle rests high on her brow, and settles in smoothly with the rest of her face.

Like the circle of the sea, the crescent of the moon and the white hot eye of the sun, she is branded with a marking akin to the pure daubs of dusts, the flecks of sunlight, the newest fall of snow. She is the colour of absence, but upon her face, it is the mark of past presence. Like her nature, gentle and reserved, her marking heralds a new dawn.

Purity rising from the ravaged.

.

.

_The daughter air is finally crowned_

_The sea foam child is at last found. _


End file.
